survivors, employees and advocates
finally started speaking out about the
injustices they faced (or currently
face) at the hands of trusted friends,
colleagues and bosses. They no longer
want to remain silent or serve as
passive bystanders.

Experts say that even organizations
with the best policies and procedures
about handling harassment claims may
be stymied in how to respond because
of precedents and policies modeled at
the top. If the executives don’t illustrate
appropriate behavior or if they demand
HR sweep claims under the rug, HR
professionals don’t have many options
but to comply with the C-suite.

Unfortunately, that can lead to a lack
of trust among employees, who feel
their only option is to report abuse to
an outside organization like the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission.
Each year, the EEOC handles
thousands of harassment claims,
though in recent years, the number
has decreased slightly. For example, in
fiscal year 2012, the number of sex-based harassment charges filed with the
EEOC hit 30,356. This number dropped
to 25,605 in FY 2017. This decrease
in reports may reflect that companies
are starting to take harassment more
seriously, and that employees feel
more comfortable addressing the issue
internally, experts say.

Though HR can only control so
much, there are opportunities for
improvement. Instead of waiting for a
claim to surface or ignoring underlying
issues within a company, HR leaders
must move away from reactive policies
and embrace proactive solutions.

Culture of Respect

The first thing that needs to
be addressed is company culture.
According to experts, culture is the
most important determinant of a
healthy workplace, free from any form
of harassment.

“I ask clients to tell me about theirculture—are people kind and respectfulto each other? Do people feel there’sa culture of civility?” O’Brien says.“Then I look at the policy—I want tosee if they specify what behaviors areinappropriate. Are supervisors andemployees trained on culture andpolicy? Does your organization includeexamples of civility and remind theentire company that everyone is aSuccessful anti-harassment strategies,he says, need to include two importantcomponents: prevention and treatment.

Prevention requires building a
culture of respect and creating a
comprehensive policy that dots all the
legal i’s and crosses the legal t’s, he
says. It also must include extensive
training that emphasizes that culture.

The treatment component embodies
the seriousness with which the
company takes its policies and training,
O’Brien says, adding it can be seen in
the way in which it responds to a claim.

Confronting WorkplaceHarassment

BY DANIELLE
WESTERMANN KING

“Leadership,” he says, “needs to ask,‘Would we want this [harassment] tohappen to someone in our family? Arewe doing the right things to ensure thatthis doesn’t happen to an employee?Because that individual is someone’sfamily.’ I think stepping back andlooking at it from this perspective offersSexual harassment is hardly new.The public-awareness floodgates wereopened in 1991 by Anita Hill, whorevealed the alleged horrors inflictedupon her by Clarence Thomas, herformer boss. Flash for ward to 2018 andit seems that every day the public hasheard another new claim about menusing power to harass and abuse others.

This decade’s most notorious
offender (so far) is Hollywood mogul
Harvey Weinstein, but he’s not alone.
Former Alabama Attorney General
Roy Moore, former Senator Al Franken
(D-Minn.), Today Show anchor Matt
Lauer and countless other famous men

If you’re not nervous about workplace sexual harassment, you should be. “Nerves are good—it means you care [and will] pay attention to the problem,” says Michael P. O’Brien, an employment-law attorney at Jones Waldo, a Utah- based law firm. “Use this nervous energy to
make positive changes,” he adds.